On Radiohead and Trees As Humans
Self-portrait. Photo by Laura Edgerton.
The cover art of Radiohead’s OK Computer mesmerizes me, decades after the album was first released in 1997. I didn’t appreciate the artwork as much then for being anything beyond interesting, a cool cover beneath which lay the band’s inimitable sound and Thom Yorke’s haunting voice. It was edgy, indicative of everything that comprised grunge but somehow more refined in its nuanced intelligence. Now, I study the layers of art in its blues and greens and hint of lavender, the distortions of an anonymous highway interchange and the words lost child at the top right corner, and I wonder about the symbolism here and what all of it means. Lost child, I think. Lost soul. A person would have likely experienced some trauma in their life in order to feel so disconnected that certain feelings would eventually culminate in the manifestation of such despair, the cartoonish yet macabre imagery of a plane crash representing something darkly symbolic. Lost soul.
I’ve been listening almost exclusively to Lucky, which might be my favorite track on OK Computer, for days, even weeks. This song is on repeat in my ear, in my head; I hear something different every time I listen. Sinking into the melancholy chord progression makes me think that Thom Yorke meant to imply that certain instances in one’s life can cause one to feel, in equal parts, both hopeful and hopeless. I think that everyone has, at one point in time, experienced this kind of beautiful sadness. I sit down at the piano and begin to figure out the chords: E minor, A minor, G, B minor, E minor, C, G, B minor, E minor; I repeat the movements, expanding on the chords as I play. I look online for guitar tabs to show to Chris; I imagine him riffing on the guitar solo as recorded at the piece’s 3:41 minute mark, the despondent wail of the electric guitar filling the room. I wonder if Sarah, mentioned in the lyrics, was someone that Yorke knew or if, conversely, the woman’s name was intended only to be a metaphor for listeners, an unnamed person or object or place that one might love the most, to the extent that that ardor becomes all-consuming, impossible to ignore or, later, to ever forget.
Yellowjackets had already been out on Netflix for a few years when I arrived recently, late to the show’s inception, to watch. I was surprised by how quickly I was drawn into the series; its creators have really nailed the 1990’s aesthetic with a strong soundtrack and cast wardrobe that reminds me of the mall music stores and food courts of that era. Tension, both natural and orchestrated, between the two concurrent storylines, one from the past and the other from present day, always leaves me anxious and wanting to know more about the characters and their lives before the accident that left them stranded in the remote wilderness together. I’ve always liked Melanie Lynskey; she’s a brilliant actor and, as much as I dislike her character’s justification of certain choices, I can relate to how I think she must often feel as a wife and mom – invisible until needed, useful but not wanted, sometimes overlooked, a rather silent background character going about her daily rounds while wishing to feel desired and important, in ways that have nothing to do with household chores. She notices everything, yet feels so misunderstood herself. She isn’t the first woman, after all, real or fictional, to be intentional about caring for her family while harboring dark secrets and trying to forget about a traumatic past.
In episode eight of the first season of Yellowjackets, there is a horribly surreal moment involving a small Cessna, a character named Laura Lee and her teddy bear, and, as this scene unfolds in front of the others while they look up in disbelief at the sky, my eyes land on the seemingly endless expanse of forest surrounding the area. A person could become lost forever, I think, in a place as remote as that. There are ways to disappear, if someone doesn’t want to be found; there are also ways to never be found, even if one desperately wants that. I think about this episode again as I listen to Lucky for what may be the hundredth, or thousandth, time. I look at the tall, blurred object at the top left of the album cover and wonder if it’s a larger, warped depiction of the faceless person to the right. Maybe it’s architecture, a very tall building next to the highway interchange, shown as an imposing sort of phantom structure at the periphery of the scene; maybe it’s a tree. Maybe all of the people driving their cars, shown in tiny glimpses on the curved highway roads, believed that they would safely reach their destinations; maybe some never did.
My 16-year-old daughter has discovered Radiohead. She tells me that she’s gatekeeping their music. We joke, as we often do, about my religious upbringing and the fact that I wasn’t allowed to listen to any secular bands as a teenager. Riley possesses a stunning vocabulary and appreciation for literary fiction. She writes beautiful, distinct poetry and holds what seems to me to be an inherited predilection for feeling and writing about everything she sees and thinks and perceives and quietly observes. She shares with me a poem that she wrote about a man near the sea. I’m astounded; I read through it again and again, then I ask her about what prompted her to write it.
She shrugs and says, “I saw a TikTok.”
When I stumble across a 1998 performance of Lucky, featuring Michael Stipe of R.E.M., I actually gasp aloud. I watch it over and over, noting the body language of Stipe and Yorke and the backup guitarists, the way they all seem to be so immersed in the music that they don’t make eye contact with anyone in the crowd. Stipe’s Losing My Religion kept me going, many years ago, when I was drowning within an abusive relationship in my early twenties, when I felt hopeless and alone and completely lost. I listen to Stipe sing again now, remembering my first apartment and its white vinyl countertops and my ex who made me give up my orange tabby that I’d named Pekoe after the tea. I wonder if either of them is still alive. I remember a domestic dispute down the hall; there was a young couple, both of them blonde and thin; we rarely ever spoke unless passing each other in the hallway. I remember standing one day with the other tenants and our landlord beside the dirty Dumpster behind our building. The landlord had fished out trash bags, containers of spoiled milk; a limp condom fell onto the ground, and we had all stared at it. My ex had scoffed at me when I’d asked in disgust if the condom was used. I suppose it didn’t matter, but it was the thing I thought to say, and I had thought that it was a valid thing to wonder about. I couldn’t understand why, at the very least, the flimsy, milky-white object hadn’t been discarded into a trash bag and sealed. I didn’t see the blonde couple after that; they were simply gone. I will always remember the way my ex used to humiliate me in public and once stationed himself near the door of my apartment, while brandishing a handgun, and told me not to speak to him or to try to leave or he would shoot me. I had been exhausted by morning, having spent the entire night periodically creeping up the stairs to see if he was asleep yet, terrified, unable to close my eyes. It wasn’t the first – or last – time that he threatened to kill me. I remember thinking that my little couch where he lay that night was marred, tainted with his cruelty and my unending fear of him. I cannot change anything that happened then; that time period is ingrained in me, but it is also a part of me that no longer exists. The documentation of that moment on stage, between two incredible singers, conversely, is permanent; the trees and forests all around us, likewise, stand stoically, quiet sentinels over other lives and hearts and minds. Can trees be lost, I wonder, like humans? Is there a difference? The trees appear, at times, to be almost human in their stances; they won’t disappear unless forced, unless erased.
I start thinking about the highway shown on the OK Computer album cover; I wonder whether it could be an actual place. I find an article, published in 2017 on the website of a public radio station, about this very question, in commemoration of the album’s twentieth anniversary. Apparently, some Radiohead fans recognized the highway interchange and deduced that it was located at a junction in Hartford, Connecticut. One of these people went a step further, cross-checking with a past tour schedule from the band, and found that Hartford was one of Radiohead’s last tour dates before heading to the studio again to record OK Computer. At the time of this article’s publication, there had reportedly been a proposal in place by the state of Connecticut to dismantle long stretches of highway and rebuild underground; I don’t know if this ever happened. I want to visit, even if that road no longer exists; I want to stand at the edge of that highway and imagine what it was decades ago and how pieces of that area may have influenced the making of OK Computer. May 21, 2027 will mark the thirtieth anniversary; I’d like to go to Hartford then and photograph everything I see.
‘‘What are you writing?” Riley asks, the sound of her voice breaking my reverie.
I hesitate, unsure of how to answer. She knows me as her mom; she depends on me for my daily care and capable nature; our relationship is growing, as she matures, into something deeper, the emotional bond that we have hopefully strengthening with each year that passes. She doesn’t know about all of my weird layers, about my mind’s constant introspection on things from the past and present and how certain memories have impacted my confidence as a mother. I don’t know how to properly articulate to her that my own deep-seated insecurities sometimes get in the way of being able to answer a basic question that shouldn’t require any forethought or internal stress.
At the piano, I slide to one end of the bench and pat the polished wood beside me. ‘‘Here,” I say to Chris. ‘‘We can both fit.”
I decide to tell him, Riley and her younger sister about my idea for the Hartford visit in two years. We will find that place; we will stand amongst the trees and dream about what has happened and what is still to come. It will be a glorious day. Chris picks up an electric guitar and sits down next to me. There is the familiar scent of his body wash, the warmth from his body as our legs touch. I watch him position his hands on the instrument’s frets. We begin to feel out the chords together, Thom Yorke’s voice swelling from my phone as we try to match his rhythm. We play until we’re exhausted but happy.